![]() Are you a photographer who specializes in actor headshots or corporate portraits, which tend to be close-ups? Then you might want to look at something at the long end of the range-200mm or maybe even longer. People who photograph primarily individual portraits, however, will likely want to use a medium telephoto lens. Photographers who mostly shoot couples-engagement and wedding photographers, for instance-may want to stay at the shorter end of the telephoto range. If you mostly shoot small group photos, you may want to choose something wider than a typical portrait lens. If you know you’ll be concentrating on a specific type of portrait photography, you can make an even more educated decision when shopping for the right focal length. A close-up perspective combined with a lighter background helped create this different-looking portrait than the one in the opening photo. ![]() Interaction with the subject is, after all, a large part of the art of portraiture. ![]() Every photographer is unique in this respect, but it’s safe to say a comfortable working distance is typically not much less than 4 feet and not much more than 10-close enough to connect, far enough to stay out of their personal space. Here they can still fill the frame, and the photographer can interact easily with the subject. Portrait lenses, however, tend to put the photographer a comfortable distance from the subject. With increased focal length comes increased distance from the subject, just as wide-angle lenses put the photographer and subject uncomfortably close together. So, if longer lenses are preferable for portraits, why not use the longest lenses available? Because, in practice, trying to photograph a person with, say, a 400mm lens on a full-frame camera, the photographer and the subject would be very far apart. But because longer lenses compress the elements in a scene, features appear smaller and closer together. This amplifies the lens distortion, which exaggerates features like noses and eyes and chins, making them look unnaturally large and stretched out. With a normal 50mm lens, for instance, to fill the frame with a portrait subject’s head, the photographer would need to stand very close to the subject. One reason why telephoto lenses are preferable to normal and wide-angle lenses is distortion. They’re often able to make these lenses very fast (with wide maximum apertures) and even quite compact (because they don’t need the many elements that can hamper image quality and increase size and weight), and they tend to do it for prices noticeably lower than ultrawides, supertelephotos and extreme zooms of comparable quality. Many manufacturers’ portrait lenses are some of the sharpest in their lineups. The good news is, this type of lens-a short to medium telephoto-is a great place to get a lot of bang for your buck. But it’s this focal range into which most portrait lenses fall. Of course, as long as there have been photographs, photographers have made great portraits with shorter and longer lenses as well. Popular portrait lens focal lengths are 85mm, 100mm, 105mm and 135mm. On a full-frame DSLR, that translates to lenses with focal lengths typically between 70mm and 200mm. Most photographers will tell you they want a longer-than-normal lens for portrait photography-a short to medium telephoto.
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